


Blue is a Breed of Darkness

by Bottomfeeder



Category: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019)
Genre: Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:20:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28147479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bottomfeeder/pseuds/Bottomfeeder
Summary: That scene where Cliff is driving around after dropping Rick home for the day struck me as kind of insane. The way he drives, the look on his face.And all the blue. There was a lot of blue (at least that’s how I remember it) and I’ve been obsessing over what one might read into it ever since I saw the movie.
Relationships: Cliff Booth/Rick Dalton
Comments: 9
Kudos: 14
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Blue is a Breed of Darkness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [k8andrewz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/k8andrewz/gifts).



> Thank you to my recipient for a very reasonable and laid-back prompt that conveniently matches my own interests with this fandom. I hope you enjoy.

At the last of the daylight slips away, Cliff’s thin layer of humanity goes with it. He’s a chameleon’s demonic blue cousin (despite the loyal dog that he is): Old skin of head-to-toe denim. Once-sellable pale blue dream of a sports car. Eyes that shine mirror-bright when sunlight can catch them. Soul as worn-down and shredded as his favorite pair of jeans. Cliff’s blue from eyes to ankles, with a mood to match. He’s a flat blue shadow bleeding into a flat blue sky. The point is to keep driving until he stops thinking about whether he’s more of a dotted outline of a man, rather than the real thing. Whether he’s even made of the same flesh and blood. Until he stops thinking about how bleeding for, and even because of, Rick, makes Cliff feel closer to real.

If he goes fast enough, wild enough, he can shake loose the tension of holding back: too much weirdness, too much violence, too much lust, too much love. It’s a bit like becoming the embodiment of chaos itself. A lot like taking his darkness for a walk. Letting it run off the leash for just long enough.

To maintain.

Maintenance is the key to everything.

Some things—the best things, even—are more high-maintenance than others.

When he’s out driving alone at the end of the day, he can let all the scenes that got cut play out in his mind:

_The long, strong lines Rick’s back and shoulders make as he play-jabs at Cliff’s face without the slightest trace of fear or aggression._

__

__

_The sharp, clean angle of Rick’s jaw as he throws his head back and laughs at something Cliff says while they’re drunk on goofy drinks and the fact that they allow each other to be funny._

_The kill-me-now blue of Rick’s eyes welling up first with crocodile tears, and then real tears._

Cliff yanks the car around a bend in the road with a vicious twist of the wrist. Despite the lunatic jerk to his movements, they’re practiced. In complete control. The route is the same as it always is on these evenings. After dropping Rick off, Cliff takes his

nine  


years  


running

sexual frustration

_(and gaping, gangrenous wound of a heart—but Cliff’s not touching that—not even while locked alone within the steel vault of his own mind)_

for a drive. Whatever’s left after failing to push it all down far enough, he takes out on the road. In the sense that he takes that for a drive, too, but also in the sense that he punishes the physical surface on which he lets his thoughts tread upon.

It’s as much a part of his routine as taking Brandy out for a walk—though nowhere near as relaxing. His whole day is full of driving, and the night ain’t over ‘til he shifts into the Karmann Ghia and drives some more. The same drive he’s taken countless times. The same abrupt turns and sudden dips might as well be carved into his skin alongside his other scars, weaving in and out and around them, they’re so familiar. The route is an ouroboros whose shape is burned into his mind, snared in the twisting and just plain twisted, looping and just plain loopy, holding pattern—note the double entendre—of a giant snake eating itself to live, and living to eat itself.

Rick drives him up the wall on a daily basis and Cliff drives like a maniac let out of his holding pen so he doesn’t aim his car at a brick wall that isn’t part of a set. He drives within the boundaries of controlled chaos after a full day of

_(far-more-controlled)_ handling and chauffeuring,

followed by some chauffeuring and handling,

and then some concierge-playing,

and finally, a lot of safe-guarding and handling. _(Note the double-entendre, and how it fails to make good.)_

Cliff’s control—a weapon he honed on shitty teachers, a shittier Old Man, and an even shittier Commanding Officer—is infinite, without the slightest stutter of release while On the (Rick) Clock. This protects them both. Someone has to maintain control, and it sure as shit won’t be Rick.

The second

the.

second.

he gets Rick tucked away in his Cielo Drive mansion all locked up nice and tight with the Frozen Margarita Time bathrobe waiting for him

—a damn near Herculean feat of patience, endurance, and will—a lunatic melancholy hijacks his motor skills. A feral energy that doesn’t crack his death mask expression, but zaps a jumper-cable jolt to his synapses, sending the emergency signal to his nerve-endings to snap into action.

Face motionless, e-motionless, he maintains a facade blank as the California sky at dusk. Cliff holds himself as eerily still and empty as a recently abandoned set. The Karmann Ghia is his body. The radio

_—rueful rocknroll howling about being born lonely over electric guitar—_

_—snakeoil salesmen hawking suntan lotion and rootbeer—_

_—goodtime girls and boys—_

do the talking and feeling, while he veers back and forth in precisely mapped-out mayhem. He can’t feel his own feelings after burying and re-burying their corpses too many times, resulting in greatly diminished returns. But everything runs through the center of him like a black livewire, severed and whipping wild from a lightning-struck telephone pole, a silent blue scream shedding angry blue sparks at every rapid shift in motion.

Self-contained and propelled by his own inertia, he winds his way through the dark to the sudden dreamer’s oasis of neon signs that rolls off of him now like any other mundane landscape. In their unnatural glow, his eyes echo a cool-hot blue, bright and dead-alive as the noble gases trapped in glass tubes. The inert glass of his eyes traps the rainbow smears from passing signs: Fireflies of neon red, helium pink, carbon dioxide white, krypton yellow, and his favorite mercury blue. An entire city of shiny, pretty lures all competing at once to hook your eye on:

_Frolic Room_  
_cocktails_  
_Romeo & Juliet_  
_OPEN_  
_GIRLS ! GIRLS ! GIRLS !_  
_coca - cola_  
_budweiser_  


_Van Nuys Drive-In Theatre_

End of the route. The noise and glare of Hollywood on full display behind him, the multi-colored comet tails of neon signs streak behind him as he goes past. At first they follow him home seemingly dog-loyal, until dissolving.

Back to the real dog. The one that’s actually loyal. Back to where the day began and the episode started. Now for the coda symmetry. It ends the way it begins. Shot on location.

Van Nuys Drive-in. Beacon of home. Lady in Cement still playing in the background. 

Free weights. Home sweet trailer. Paperbacks. TV set. Dinner from a cardboard box.

Trusty sidekick. Knocking him down easy as a bowling ball sliding into a pin.

Brandy steals the wind from him, slobber forcing a gutpunch of a laugh out of him that jangles loose the crazed hungry thing inside that can’t be quelled by cheap noodles and reconstituted chemical cheese dust.

Fuzzed out electric guitar nerves fuse back together once the television floods the small space with bright voices familiar to Cliff as Brandy’s bark, Rick’s whine, his own answer back. As family.

And while the tv’s providing conversation among the collection of pulpy paperbacks, comics, movie posters, motorcycle flyers, the restless thing inside his chest settles into something within a few hundred miles of contentment. More or less.

For the night, at least.

 _But maybe, since this is a tv show, and not a movie, the sequence of events has a chance to go a little differently. As the writers find out there’s a surprise renewal, inexplicably, for more seasons after all. Even though it seemed that horse had already been beat, shot, and stabbed to death. They rack their brains to come up with new plot points and character development._ Any _new plot points and character development._

 _Maybe the characters that you thought had become predictable take a sudden sharp left turn into No Man’s Land the audience doesn’t see coming. Something that changes the perception of what’s possible for such a pulpy show forever._

_Maybe the actors get antsy, bored with the limits of their characters, and are desperate to try any new challenge. As long as it makes them feel alive._

_Maybe the show you thought you knew, suddenly becomes a different one. Something stranger, and darker, and more violent. And yet somehow funnier, and more optimistic. And more passionate. And sexier. Definitely sexier. ___

____

____

_Maybe there’s a shocking twist ending or three. Or seven._

_Maybe that’s the most incredible setup for an insane love story._

__

__

_You know. The best kind._

_The only kind worth a damn._

_Small screen or large screen._

Might be worth pitching to Rick to get his take, now that he thinks about it.

**Author's Note:**

> The ancients did not associate the color blue with their goddesses. To them, blue was not even a real color but a shade of night, a derivative of black.
> 
> In the ancient world, blue was a breed of darkness.
> 
> _— Sacre Bleu_ , Christopher Moore


End file.
